hey hallelujah
by firelights
Summary: Jin/Takaya; emotional manipulation - Jin is nothing but what Takaya makes him.


**a/n**: so yeah what is this? it's takaya being a giant douche, that's what.

the bit about jin using takaya's evoker instead of his own is headcanon from a friend of mine - it's not explicitely canon but it was never jossed, either.

* * *

1.

It's been a month since they escaped the labs, and Jin can't hold his Evoker without shaking. He isn't sure why he still tries, because it's—

(killing him. Moros is destroying him from the inside-out, it's threatening to break the barriers between them and tear him straight apart.

It's getting closer every day. Jin doesn't know what to do.)

not getting any easier. He keeps telling himself that one day it will, that one day he'll be able to raise the Evoker to his temple strong and unflinching. It's just not today.

(it's not tomorrow, either. Tomorrow, Jin wakes up with cold, metal hands curled around his throat and when he tries to scream for Takaya nothing comes out. Tomorrow, Jin almost dies, and he spends the rest of the day curled up in their filthy apartment's filthy bathroom, face wet with tears and mind full of miserable noise. He says to himself, "I don't want to die," so quietly he can pretend he didn't say anything at all.

Jin has never felt so weak.)

.

The next day, Takaya takes away Jin's Evoker and replaces it with his own. He never says anything about it, but Jin can tell—it sits differently in his hands, it feels foreign to him. Something in his mind doesn't fit with him like it did with his own.

He wants to tell Takaya to take it back, that he doesn't need it. And he wants to ask Takaya if he's going to use Jin's Evoker from now on, or if he isn't going to use an Evoker at all. He wants to ask Takaya how he's going to cope.

(Jin wants to ask Takaya why he did it, but he thinks he knows. He just wishes he didn't.)

Jin does none of these things. He lies in bed that night, entirely unable to sleep, and holds the Evoker close to his chest. He feels his heart beat against it and thinks, 'I fucked up, didn't I'.

(something about it almost makes him want to laugh. It's at least better than crying.)

.

2.

Jin's grown, since then—he's older, he's stronger. He can effortlessly curl his fingers around the cool metal of his Evoker like he's been doing it all his life.

(he's not sure whether that's because he's managed to make himself forget what the Evoker represents to him, or just because it's really _Takaya's_.And he's not sure which one he'd rather it be, either.)

Jin is sixteen and knows how to kill a man.

.

The first time Jin kills, it is with Takaya. It is with Takaya's Evoker hidden inside his jacket and Takaya's hand on his face, touching him absently like it's the most natural of things. Jin is not sure if Takaya even realises he is doing it, and wonders what is becoming of them.

(Jin wonders if Takaya touches him like a mother touches her child or like a man touches his lover. He can't tell, because he's had neither of these things.)

The first time Jin kills, it's with Takaya's gun. Jin thinks there is something off about holding a real gun, after holding an Evoker first—it takes him a moment to realise that there is nothing paranormal about this. It is not about Personas, or being a Persona-user—it is about killing a man as another man would do. It is entirely human and, as such, something that Jin never truly understands because he is _not _entirely human.

It's sobering. Jin's hands don't shake, now.

(he doesn't flinch, either. He thinks 'this is what I had wanted, isn't it?' but the sense of satisfaction never comes.

They're standing together in a dark alley over a man's dead body when Takaya kisses him for the first time. Blood laps at his feet and Takaya's dry lips move against his and Jin feels nothing at all.)

.

3.

Eventually, Jin finds out that Takaya doesn't use an Evoker at all. It disturbs him, almost, when he sees it for the first time; Takaya shivering, grasping his head, _forcing _his Persona out. Chidori is unflinching—maybe because out of all of them, she understands the pain that comes with having a Persona the most—but something about it never really leaves Jin. He plays it over again in his head and feels like a child, guilt and fear growing inside him like poison-ivy. It makes him want to apologise but he thinks that he couldn't explain what for if Takaya asked him.

(it makes him feel like he did that time Takaya kissed him—it makes him feel empty.)

.

Of course, they take suppressants now—there's no real danger of their Personas breaking free. But when Jin watches Takaya summon Hypnos, there's something in him that always wonders if this time is going to be the last.

He never asks Takaya what he did with Jin's Evoker. He supposes he most have kept it—he wouldn't have just thrown something like that away, he wouldn't risk anyone finding it. Jin doesn't know what would happen if someone without a Persona tried to use an Evoker, but he can't imagine it being something good.

(Jin sometimes thinks about what using his own Evoker would be like after using Takaya's for so long. He can't picture it.

He thinks that it maybe wouldn't feel like it was his at all.)

.

4.

The second time Takaya kisses him is at night when Jin cannot sleep. It's different from the first time, somehow—

(because he hasn't just killed someone; because he feels something; because he kisses back)

but it's still wrong. Something about it, Jin finds disgusting—something like the lights being on and his eyes aching, or his hands shaking, or his mouth being dry. Jin can't think at all. Takaya's fingers curl into his hair and Jin can feel his ribs and his knees and his elbows squashed between them and can feel that they are both dying. Takaya kisses Jin and everything about it is wrong.

.

Chidori knows nothing about it and Jin feels like a liar. It's supposed to be the three of them, together, and somehow it's become two and one instead.

(they're not the same, Jin thinks. They're not the same things at all.)

.

The third time Takaya kisses him is—

.

5.

Jin thinks that he is still falling in love. He is falling in love with a man who has kissed him twice and both of those times had been wrong in every way.

(he's devoted, he's obsessed. It's not quite the same as love, but it still makes him hold Takaya's Evoker to his chest like something precious—it still makes him crush up Takaya's suppressants into water and sleep in the same bed as him and worry about the way Takaya's ribs jut out of his skin.)

Because this is how it is, now, that Jin finds himself closer to Takaya every day but still somehow so far apart—he thinks that when they touch they are the furthest apart lovers could ever be. Jin thinks vaguely that there is maybe something wrong with this, but at the same time he doesn't know how close or far apart lovers _should _be. He thinks that the two of them should just be however they are because he does not even know how else they could be.

He doesn't know how to be anything other than Takaya's. They lie together in their bed that is too small for the both of them and the dark makes Jin into nothing at all. When Takaya kisses him that night for the third time, he isn't anything but what Takaya makes him into.

Takaya shifts closer to him until his mouth is at Jin's ear. Jin can feel his breath and shivers, and Takaya says, "Chidori had some very interesting information for me—she says that there are Persona-users other than us. That they've formed a team and are planning to eliminate the Dark Hour. We can't let this happen, Jin. We're going to have to eliminate _them_."

Jin breathes in. "Anything you say."

In the dark, Takaya smiles.


End file.
